


The Names of His Dead

by scheherazade



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Bill Adama is a jerk, M/M, Post-Series, dead people don't count as characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:39:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazade/pseuds/scheherazade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis Hoshi buries his dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Names of His Dead

 

> _"Sir, there is something in the universe. Something let us find Earth, dead as it is. And I know — I _know_ I can find Felix. Me and Felix... There's been too much loss already."_

 

 

Louis pitched his tent on a hillside overlooking the river bend, where the group of ex-Pegasus officers had chosen to make their settlement. To the west the river strung together a series of bauble-bright lakes. The grass grew long and tufted across rocky terrain in the upper hills, while farther down the valley was dappled in forest and sun. It was a good place, and when they'd found it Louis had been glad to put down his pack and call a halt to their march.

Not everyone had had to find their new homes on foot. Some other groups, the luckier ones, had managed to abscond with one or more of what Raptors were left. They only had enough fuel for a few runs. When the Raptors broke down, they would be left to rust into new bones for this planet soon enough. It was what Lee Adama wanted. They would start anew, in Lee's idealist mind, human and Cylon alongside the natives. Bill Adama had gone along with the plan stoically, and Louis knew it wasn't because Laura Roslin supported the idea. It was because Roslin was too weak to walk most days, much less govern. Her grave was calling, and Adama would follow her.

The thought gave Louis some measure of peace.

As the last and highest ranking tactical officer, Louis had helped Adama coordinate the diaspora, drawing up maps and rough how-to guides for the weary survivors — settlers, he supposed. Though most of them would end up food for predators, prey of illness and exhaustion and the accidents of planetary life. The Cylons had destroyed humanity, root and branch. And what seedlings scattered into space under Roslin and Adama's command, this final act would eradicate.

Civilization, literature, government, thousands of years of creation and history — gone. "Starting anew" was one way of looking at it.

"You sure you don't want to come with us?" Noel had asked, before his group set out. They were taking a Raptor to the seaside, to fish and forage. They were pilots, mostly.

Louis shook his head. "I'm going to build a cabin in those hills." He pointed on his map. "I know the way. Finch and some of the other guys know how to hunt. We'll figure out the rest as we go."

"I'll come find you soon as we're settled," Noel promised. "Start up a trading network. Stay safe and don't go too far, all right?"

"Of course," Louis had said, and he'd lied. He'd always been a good liar. You didn't make it as a soldier in the Colonial fleet without learning how to lie not just with your words, but with your voice and your eyes and your entire self. Only those in command could afford truth as a blunt weapon. You lied to hide fear and doubt and insubordination. You lied to survive.

Most people lied in the final exodus from the ships to the surface. No complex tools, no medicine; no cities, was Lee Adama's cardinal rule. They were allowed the clothes on their back and rope and blankets. Louis argued for tents to shelter them until they could build their own; Lee conceded.

In their blankets, they hid sewing kits and nets and knives and whatever else they could. Louis took his sidearm and eight rounds. He used six during the fortnight of their trek into the mountains: two to bring back game when they ran low on food, and four on a huge cat that attacked the camp one night. After they settled down, Paisley began to teach the others how to fashion crude spears using leftover wood from building. They lost more men before they learned how to use those weapons properly. Louis heard the screaming in the night, kept his gun close, and didn't go help.

He'd led them here, because that was his job, but he had no desire to lead these people in their new life. It wasn't a new life that he wanted.

He foraged for nuts and edible plants. Every few days he made the morning's trek to the river to fish, using one of the nets Finch had smuggled off the Zephyr. He didn't go into the village — or what there was of it: a few lean-to huts, mixed with the tents they had taken. Sometimes he heard people talking, singing. If any of those voices ever belonged to Noel — if Noel had ever come looking for him — Louis didn't know. And if the others ever saw him by the river, they didn't approach him.

There was a rocky outcrop a short trek up the hillside from his tent. He made a fire pit and sat beside it for hours at a time, watching the sun rise and the sun set. The fire was enough to keep the wildlife away, but not bright enough to dim the constellations. By day he watched for Raptors; by night he counted stars.

He talked to himself to remember how to speak. He wrote on the rock with charred bits of wood. His hands cramped, but he had no paper so he wrote like this. He drew linear equations and calculated distances to stars based on half-remembered charts. He wrote his own name. Louis Hoshi. He wrote the names of his dead. Jurgen Belzen, Helena Cain, Kendra Shaw. Anastasia Dualla, Margaret Edmondson. Felix Gaeta.

The rain washed away his writing and his calculations. Louis set hollowed logs in the earth beside his tent to catch the freshwater. He thought about standing in the storm, going down to the river to see it swollen and grey.

 _Belzen, Cain, Shaw,_ he wrote in his mind.

_Dee. Racetrack._

_Felix._

When the rains ceased, he began building cairns, up in the hills where the river splintered into tumbling streams. He'd buried the dead once on Sagittaron, when he was a child: his maternal grandmother had died when he was six. His parents and Mateo and Ross had died in the attacks. He buried them once, in the Pegasus bridge as he resolved to fight the Cylons under Admiral Cain's command. He buried them again when they found Galactica and her fleet, and 47,853 survivors had yielded not one familiar face.

And now there was only Noel.

For Dee, he built a cairn of smooth, flat river rocks. Each was girdled by a thin white line; wishing stones, they'd been called back on Sagittaron. Margaret would smack him upside the head for sentimentality if she could see him now. The thought made Louis smile. He built hers using rough chunks of rock, glittering with minerals, torn by wind and rain from the mountain's bones.

They'd been so young, all of them. If anyone it should have been Dee building cairns. Not him. Not Louis, who had already lived and lost a life, been married and held a child in his arms and pinned both their pictures to the memorial wall. Now there were only rocks.

He had Felix's dog tags, kept in a box next to his own, and the gun with its two remaining rounds. Some nights he fell asleep with his hands tangled in the beaded chains. Some nights it was the gun. One night he dreamt of Admiral Cain.

_How did you live with yourself, Lieutenant Hoshi? Taking orders from weak, misguided men. You were one of mine. You once served on a proud ship._

There's been too much loss, sir, he wanted to say. Louis wondered if she would understand. Helena Cain, who had died living like a razor's edge. But he'd had to become a double-edged blade, cutting himself as much as the enemy to survive. And there was too much loss.

In his dream, Admiral Cain smiled.

 _When the moment comes,_ she said, _do not flinch._

He woke with an answer withered on his lips.

In the morning he began building a cairn for Felix. He gathered rocks from the valley and the riverbed, porous-smooth like chapped hands and scabs peeling into scars. He alternated layers by color: rose gold and egg blue, earth green and gunmetal grey. It was slow work, carrying his burdens up to the outcrop where the cairn would stand. He worked sunrise to sunset, until he was covered in dust, and one of his fingernails bled.

On the second day he placed the last stone, a white one, well-shaped and marble-like. A dimmer version of the white that pillared Gemenon's great temples, but lovely enough. Felix never believed in the gods, but marble was right for consecration. The cairn came to his shoulder. From here, Louis could look out and see the valley spread out below. In the distance the mountains were blue.

He went down to the river and washed himself. Back in his tent, Louis smoothed out his rumpled dress greys. The dog tags clinked against his chest; their combined weight was comforting around his neck. He took his sidearm, gathered a handful of goldmoss and followed the stream past where he'd buried Dee and Racetrack, up to the outcrop and the marble-topped cairn.

Louis set the flowers at its foot. He squared his shoulders, arm bending slowly into a salute. Felix had been denied a funeral on Galactica; Louis would see it done right this time.

Disengage the safety. Two rounds. It was a waste, but then, who would be left to mourn this?

He lifted the gun.

He saw the Raptor from the corner of his eye. Flying low over the mountain range, it was a blur on the horizon, maybe two clicks north. Nine months of watching and waiting and it appeared now, when he'd thought it finally over. And he knew. This was the direction Adama had taken his Raptor and his dying woman; Louis had followed on foot with his group, not telling anyone why he'd chosen this specific direction, and they hadn't asked. They'd trusted him.

But now he knew, with a blinding clarity even as the Raptor disappeared from sight. Bill Adama was still alive.

He traced the outline of the dog tags under his jacket.

_I'm sorry, Felix. Just a little longer. Just one more thing._

He had two bullets left. And now he knew whose name was inscribed on the first.

Louis packed up his tent.

He travelled along the ridge, above the tree line where he could see the surrounding terrain and the Raptor if it appeared again. He tracked with his stubbornness as much as with his senses.

 _Digging more empty wells?_ he heard Margaret's voice, teasing.

"Not empty," he said out loud. "Just got to keep looking, before we can go home. Like last time. I'll find him."

_What are you going to say to him?_

"Stick around and find out."

She laughed. _Louis Hoshi's personal mutiny. Is that what this is? You felt left out?_

"You kept me out. You all did. I understand why, but you shouldn't have."

_Gaeta's idea, not mine._

"I know."

_Why didn't you do this on Galactica, when they let you go? Why did you go on following his orders?_

He looked north to the next rise of hills. "There'd been too much loss," he said. "You follow a weak man because there's nobody else who can take care of what's left. I'm not Felix. I don't have any ideas of how to make things right."

_Won't this make things right?_

"Right enough," he replied. "I'll find him."

Margaret's voice left him then, but he thought he could feel the warmth of her smile. Because they both knew it to be true. If you dug wide and deep enough, there was something in the universe that would lead you to what you were always meant to find. Something in the universe demanded patterns and full circles and reckoning. Something in the universe guided him.

He found the cabin two weeks later.

Bill Adama had gone grey since they settled on Earth. The dusty jacket and fatigue bottoms hung loosely from a much-reduced figure, and he moved slowly. From a distance Louis watched Adama walk toward the highest point on the ridge; he followed. The morning was windy and cool, clouds racing across the sky. The wind's blustering masked the sound of his footsteps.

The old man's destination was a pile of rocks — a grave, Louis realized after a moment. Everyone had his own dead. And everyone had his day of reckoning.

Adama was laying flowers on Roslin's grave when he heard the footsteps. He turned and faced the gun aimed at his heart. The sun hid behind a cloud.

"Mr. Hoshi," he said.

"Adama."

There was a long moment of silence. Louis waited for Adama to ask why. To reach for a weapon. To run. But Adama said,

"I didn't expect this of you."

"When you questioned me in the brig, you seemed to think me capable of anything."

"You're not a mutineer."

"No," Louis agreed. "And you're not my commander."

"This is about Gaeta."

"This is about what you did during the war."

"The war haunts us all," said Adama. "But is there no life for you beyond the war, soldier? We've all had to forgive."

Louis didn't lower his gun.

"Even Gaeta, in the end."

"Felix spared you," Louis whispered, "because Felix always wanted to do the right thing."

The old man's face was impassive. Imperious.

_Do not flinch._

"I'm not Felix," Louis said.

 

 

A year and two months after the Landing, Noel found the village nestled in the foothills. Forty people, more men than women, and a collection of ramshackle huts that they called Pegasus for the ship that had once saved their lives. He hailed from a distance, not keen on getting shot or stuck with a spear or whatever weapons they've made up here. The answering reply was hesitant, until they got close enough and someone recognized him, and then the back-thumping welcome literally knocked the breath from Noel's lungs.

He hadn't known how long it would take him to find this place, so he'd travelled light. All he had to trade were some salted fish and baubles made of shells. But now that he knew the way, Noel reckoned the return journey wouldn't take more than three days. His group had settled around the delta of this very river ("Helena," one of the villagers informed him, and Noel had to smile). As soon as they got some canoes up and running, regular trading would be more than doable.

Noel scanned the faces who had come to greet him.

"Where's Louis?" he asked.

They pointed him to the wooded hillside where Louis lived in solitude. He sometimes came down to the river, they said, but no one had seen him in a while.

Noel followed a faint path to a clearing. He found no cabin and no Louis, no sign of settlement but the remnants of hollowed logs and a fire pit littered with dead leaves. Farther up the hill there were two cairns, one smooth and one rough, both meticulously stacked. No one but Louis went far into the hills, the villagers had said. Noel touched the stones with cold hands.

He kept climbing. On an outcrop he found another cairn. And he knew, even before he was close enough to see the pile of bones in its shadow. Goldmoss grew in clusters around the foot of the cairn. The gun lay tangled in its leaves.

He sifted through the bones and rags and found not one, but two pairs of dog tags. He rubbed away the dust covering their names: 

_F. Gaeta  
_ _L. Hoshi_

 

 

He buried Louis' bones, gathered armfuls of white saxifrage to tuck between the rocks of the cairn. He laid their dog tags amid the goldmoss growing against all odds. He rubbed his knuckles over his eyes; it only made the gritty feeling worse.

"You're a frakkin' liar, Louis Hoshi," he told the mountain and the weeds. "You know that? I hope you're happy."

Noel stayed until the sun bowed low in the west. By its last light he made his way down to the river, to the village and the people who called it home.

 


End file.
